A severe winter storm weather blanketed much of the western U.S. late Saturday, causing mass flooding, car crashes, road closures and leading to eight deaths.

Heavy snow and freezing rain led to more car crashes in New Mexico, where a 4-year-old girl was killed in a rollover accident. Three more people died in a weather-related crash in the Texas Panhandle, the Associated Press reports. The storm downed power lines and trees in California, killing three since it began Thursday. Meanwhile, Arizona firefighters found the body of a man who died in the high waters of the Santa Cruz River.

Forecasters said the “Nordic Outbreak” is moving South and eastward toward the Atlantic, with much of the Texas Panhandle under winter weather advisory until Monday.

@Yoshi The condition is called "persistent drought", and yes, most of those areas are in it. That doesn't mean rain doesn't happen - even flooding. It just means that their total rainfall is below a certain level.

If a drought is defined as half of normal rainfall or less, and a place gets a third of normal rainfall in an hour, and that's all it gets that year, it's going to flood. But it's still going to be in drought.